The Many Faces of John Constantine

My long-term reread of my comics collection has long since arrived at Vertigo, and I'm coming to the end of Hellblazer, which was one of my favorite comics back around 1999-2002 or so (though based primarily on storylines from years earlier). It seemed the obvious choice after reading Animal Man, Doom Patrol and (especially) Swamp Thing, where Constantine first appeared during Alan Moore's run on that series.

I've always found it interesting how Vertigo arose out of those comics that were doing interesting things with established DC characters. The first, who predated Vertigo by years, was Swamp Thing, when Alan Moore turned the character into a parable on environmentalism and on how screwed up America is (oh, if only the Alan Moore of 1982 could see us now). But then Grant Morrison went and did crazy things with both Animal Man and Doom Patrol, while Neil Gaiman grew the 1940s obscurity of the Sandman into one of the best comics ever created.

Hellblazer always had a weird position in that family of titles, since John Constantine showed up in all the magic-related books at some point, but wasn't himself a long-standing character who'd been forgotten for decades. It was also the title's bad fortune to be published alongside the books that were getting all the buzz (from the Sandman to Preacher to Transmetropolitan and beyond), and to be a sort of springboard for lesser-known British writers to make their mark in American comics.

The first case in point is Jamie Delano, who wrote most of the first 40 issues. He's a fine writer, and his first nine issues in particular are brilliantly atmospheric. He set the tone of commenting on the moral decay of Britain that he was observing, and started fleshing out the character from the occult wideboy that Moore envisaged.

But Delano is one of the great unsung writers of Vertigo - his name appeared on a multitude of ads for new Vertigo series, but none of them really ever made that much of a mark. So there may have been some disappointment from the fans that it wasn't Moore writing the book. Couple that with some of the very "deep England" storylines that Delano was writing, like the Fear Machine, which depicted modern-day pagans and hippies and Ley lines, and it was probably a very hard sell for American readers (though the atmosphere of the Fear Machine storyline stuck with me so much that, years after reading it, I was reminded of it very forcefully when I passed some sort of commune in Camberwell in 2018).

Garth Ennis was the next writer on the book, and my suspicion is that his is the defining run for most fans, at least given how many of his storylines were collected in trade paperback form at the time he was writing it. Revisiting those issues, it's interesting to see how many of Ennis's themes are already present, including his rage against self-serving people in power, as well as how much backstory he creates for Constantine separate from the backstory Delano created.

It's also funny how, despite being such a writer-driven book, it really took off when the late, lamented Steve Dillon took over as artist from Will Simpson. Ennis is a writer who demands a certain intestinal fortitude from his artists, but when he links up with one who fits him well, they hit the stratosphere together. Put plainly, Dillon drew the blood and guts so well that it spurred Ennis on to make things even more gross and horrifying - a sort of competition that led to them working together on Preacher, which became one of Vertigo's best books as it moved further away from the main DC universe.

(Even to this day, it feels weird to read a Garth Ennis book that isn't drawn by Steve Dillon - which makes the latter's death in 2016 even sadder for me)

Ennis's run did have something in common with Delano's, beyond the character, and that's the contemporary politics. One of the main subplots was around racist groups, which underlay a lot of Ennis's issues and played out in his final storyline, Rake at the Gates of Hell. What's also notable about that, and the look at far-right politics in Paul Jenkins's subsequent run, is how little has changed with regard to racism and the BNP and English Defence League et al, in today's Britain.

As mentioned, Paul Jenkins took over after Ennis, and went in a more consciously English-mysticism direction, more in common with Delano's run. He also created a new history and supporting cast for Constantine, though I suspect he referred to more of Ennis's plot lines than Ennis did to Delano's. There's a lot to like about the Jenkins run on Hellblazer, but it's sadly overlooked, possibly because he wasn't as bloodthirsty as Ennis or Warren Ellis, who followed him. I also suspect that Jenkins was too English for the American readers, like Delano.

Warren Ellis is another writer whose tics and preoccupations are all over his run of the book. Rereading his only major story arc, Haunted, it's long on atmosphere and gore, but not necessarily on plot. He tries to turn "London" into a character, but with my jaded 41-year-old eyes it feels a bit cliche, especially because he was writing during those sunlit uplands between the Labour general election victory of 1997 and the Iraq War - London was cleaning up and becoming more the stomping grounds of Baddiel and Skinner's Three Lions than Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez.

(BTW I only know about Raymond because Ellis name-checked him in a blog post)

Ellis also creates his own backstory for Constantine over his ten issues, of which I have eight, but he does a good job, despite my criticism of the noir above, of balancing the magic with Constantine's innate scheming nature. Other writers portray him as less powerful than Ellis does, but Ellis shows him using overt magic in a way that adds to the mystique of the character.

Brian Azzarello, the next writer after Ellis, went way in the other direction in his run. He also took Constantine more fully into the US, because Azzarello's American and wasn't as steeped in London as his predecessors. This may have something to do with why that's my least favorite run (of the ones I know), and why I stopped reading the book during that time. This isn't to say that Azzarello wrote the character badly, apart from not nailing John's accent - but he's a crime writer more than a horror writer, and so it never really gels for me.

I lost sight of the book after that, though I remember hearing when Mike Carey took over, and then subsequently when Peter Milligan did. I've seen recently that the book has been revived, and Si Spurrier is the new writer, taking in themes like Brexit Britain, the way Boris Johnson is literally fucking the country over, and so on. I no longer have a local comic shop, and due to the coronavirus, it's possible local comic shops won't exist anymore - but I'm intrigued enough that I might look to pick up a few new issues or collections when I can.

Constantine is a good lens through which to talk about what's happening in Britain now, and while that may have stopped the book from ever taking off the way Sandman or Preacher did, I love that it's the one remaining link to the late 1980s, before Vertigo even existed, and now after the Vertigo line has been discontinued. At any rate, I'm glad there's still a book for interested viewers of his short-lived NBC show and of Legends of Tomorrow to explore (btw, Matt Ryan is a great Constantine).